Smart Home Under NB-IoT Technology
The greater the market potential, the more natural competitors, and the greater the competition.
Regarding the scale of the smart home market, we can see a large number of forecast data released by countless research institutions, and we might as well pick a few groups from them:
From 2016 to 2018, the scale of my country’s smart home market has grown year by year. In 2019, the market size exceeded 150 billion yuan and will reach 182 billion yuan in 2020.
The scale of China’s smart home market is growing at an annual rate of 20%-30%. From the Electronic Equipment and System Research Center of China Electronics Standardization Institute
In 2019, China’s smart home market product shipments totaled 840 million units, of which video entertainment shipments were the largest with 347 million units. Home surveillance security equipment is the second, with a total of 164 million units.
From the above data, it can be seen that no matter in terms of scale, growth rate, or terminal access volume, it shows the great market prospect of the smart home.
With the maturity of wireless connection technology and low-power chip design technology, the consumption threshold of smart home products is gradually lowered, and consumer acceptance continues to increase. The smart home industry has truly begun to develop rapidly and grow into the most potential market segment in the Internet of Things industry.
In this battle to seize the market, smart homes have naturally become a strategic offensive area for NB-IoT. But NB-IoT still needs to work harder to capture smart homes because of:
1. Among the currently visible applications, it is relatively tightly bound to the original communication technology
Wireless communication technology has become the cornerstone of home intelligence. Currently, more wireless technologies on the market basically use three wireless communication technologies: ZigBee, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. The three wireless technologies, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee, have their own application areas, which are mainly determined based on their advantages.
Wi-Fi is widely used in various IoT applications, including home appliances, surveillance cameras, toys, etc., while smartphones or the Internet do not require a gateway when connected via Wi-Fi.
The Bluetooth situation is similar to WiFi. All mobile devices support Bluetooth and can be connected directly, but Bluetooth is mainly used in wearable devices and fitness equipment with low power consumption.
ZigBee is mainly used in the field of home automation, such as lighting systems and security sensors, because in this field, cost and power consumption are key factors, and a mesh network is required.
The three wireless communication methods of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they occupy different markets.
So far, these three technologies are still the main communication technologies used in smart homes, and they are closely tied to various types of home appliances. Based on the previous development, they have been developed in terms of user perception, cost, and support services. To achieve optimization, the new influx of technology still needs to spend a lot of effort to compete with it.
2. During the same period, other new competitive technologies poured into smart homes
In recent years, for LoRa, which is also the LPWAN technology, as the growth rate of the enterprise-level Internet of Things has begun to be limited, LoRa companies have begun to adjust their development direction and simultaneously attack the consumer-level Internet of Things. A smart home, as the most important use case category in the consumer Internet of Things, is currently the most anticipated application scenario in the consumer industry.
In fact, LoRa is also spreading to the smart home field, forming many landing cases. Some companies have also released LoRa-related consumer-grade products, such as thermostats, smart door locks, leak monitors, smoke alarms, air conditioners, temperature and humidity sensors, smart shoes, smart sockets, etc.
3. The market cultivation cycle is long, and the popularization of new technologies in the field of the smart home requires a process
After nearly four years of development, NB-IoT has become popular in the Internet of Things industry. The three major operators have built millions of NB-IoT base stations and have large-scale application cases.
However, in the early stage of the development of NB-IoT, the industry has focused more on some policy-driven areas, and broad consumer-level applications are a blue ocean market yet to be developed. As mentioned earlier, the smart home is the most important use case category in the consumer-level Internet of Things, and it is naturally the same.
Although, from the perspective of the industry, NB-IoT has passed the stage of publicity and market education. But on the consumer side, the next step is to continue to cultivate more applications in the consumer application field. However, for each subdivided field, a long cultivation period is still needed to move from the experimental stage to the mature stage step by step.
The wide application of NB-IoT in smart homes presents both opportunities and challenges
In this blue ocean market for smart homes that have yet to be fully developed, from the application side, NB-IoT is already used in smart water meters, smart gas meters, smart smoke detectors, smart door locks, smart home appliances (air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, rice cookers, Etc.) Industry applications such as smart sockets are blooming everywhere, and it is expected that there will be tens of millions of connections within one or two years, and it is expected that the scale will reach one billion soon.
However, NB-IoT has many problems to be solved in actual combat. From the perspective of companies, many companies are currently taking a wait-and-see attitude toward NB-IoT. From the feedback of some small-scale companies adopting NB-IoT technology, the current products using NB-IoT technology mainly have the following problems:
One is the cost issue. Compared with Bluetooth modules that range from a few yuan to more than ten yuan, although the NB-IoT module has entered the 15 yuan mark, it still does not have enough outstanding advantages. This is not for consumers or solution providers. Enough power to replace the mature wireless communication solution with a brand-new technical solution.
The second is after-sales issues. Taking smart door locks as an example, it can be seen from some user feedback that the current network delay problem of NB-IoT door locks has made many customers quite criticized.
When an enterprise tries to solve it, it is found to be a network problem, which is difficult to solve with its own efforts. It often has to contact the operator to make certain maintenance and adjustments at the system architecture level to make the delay and disconnection problems slightly improved, but the problem remains exists.
The third is an investment issue. The current NB-IoT network is in the initial stage of commercial use, and many problems need to be discovered and solved continuously. Therefore, many manufacturers are not daring to let go. Regardless of the financial issue, it is the most important word-of-mouth issue of the company. Once customers are disappointed in the brand due to imperfect technology, the loss of goodwill will be immeasurable.
Conclusion
In the first half of the year, the release of the “Notice on Promoting the Comprehensive Development of the Mobile Internet of Things” (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”) and NB-IoT formally became a core component of the 5G standard, which brought tremendous development to NB-IoT in various fields. The impact of course also includes the field of the smart home.
First of all, the development direction of communication technology is clarified. In the future, a pattern of 4G/5G/NB-IoT coexistence will be formed, with a longer life cycle. Therefore, manufacturers will not only have more direction in technology selection but also dispel the worries of terminal application manufacturers, so that they can concentrate more on developing certain technologies.
Secondly, NB-IoT terminals belong to long-term operation products. Before the release of the “Notice”, manufacturers made various attempts. The release of the “Notice” gives enterprises the firm confidence to upgrade their intelligence.
NB-IoT will take some time to penetrate the application market including smart homes.
Besides the Smart Home Under NB-IoT article, you may also be interested in the below articles.
What is the difference between WIFI and WLAN?
Summary of 41 Basic Knowledge of LTE
What Is The 5G Network Slicing?
2 Responses